Great songs from forgotten rap albums part 13

Lil' Slim ft. Pimp Daddy - Blunt After Blunt



Let's start today with a 1994 Mannie produced banger from Lil' Slim's 2nd release Powder Shop featuring one of the many dead pre-Juvenile Ca$h Money Records rappers. Seriously, being signed to Ca$h Money Records before 1997 was as dangerous a career option as being employed by the WWF or WCW in the 90s. Anyway, I've always found songs about smoking weed preferable to the actual act of smoking weed itself as sitting on dubious looking couches in weed spots, frequenting with undesirables, getting hot-rock burns in good clothes, listening to Bob Marley, smelling of smoke, and late night trips to garages for hydrogenated junk-food and soft drinks which are high in sugar (eat after eight and put on weight, dudes) aren't activities I'm tryna partake in.



Tragedy Khadafi - Neva Die Alone Part 2



Yeah, I know Tragedy jockin' on blogs is laughable, and that it's hard to take a Tragedy song about him extracting revenge on some shady young upstart who set him up seriously after the story that Maino beat the shit out of him and then had him hiding out in his Miami hotel room all week, but bear with me on this one as it's one of the five good songs Tragedy has made since The War Report. I was genuinely fiending for Still Reporting in 2003 after the two previous years had given us killer 12"s like What's Good? and Stay Free, and his cameo on Cormega's They Forced My Hand, but then the album turned up with neither of the singles on it, nor anything as good as them bar this one track. It's obviously not as good as the original Neva Die Alone, but since that's the best song on The War Report and one of the greatest examples of late 90s Q.B Thug-Rap I'm hardly gonna hold it against part 2 here.



Dubee AKA Sugawolf - Ain't No Curr



If you listen to Mac Dre and/or Mac Mall then Dubee is someone who pops up on their shit with such alarming regularity that you eventually just surrender to his charms and check some of his releases out to see if he's ever made a song which neither of the Macs appear on. The hardcore Bay aficionados seem to laud his debut, but, man, them guys are buggin' because it's all about his sophomore effort For That $crilla. Both Macs, Too $hort and Suga Free are decent reference points, but I'm rather fond of Ain't No Curr, by far the hardest cut on For That $crilla, myself as it sounds like some unreleased mid to late 90s C-Bo tune, and that can only ever be a favourable comparison.



Ice City ft. Freeway & Oschino - Philly N*ggaz



How you gon' try come at the kid?
How you gon' get mad 'cause your girl let me cum in her wig?

A fair point, although there are other areas I personally prefer to bust nutz over. So, the Freeway presents Ice City album came hot on the tails of Philadelphia Freeway and it had me excited because it appeared to be a group consisting of Freeway, Peedi (Fall Back was a slept on single of '03) and two weedcarrier dudes, but when my copy arrived it was more like a group consisting of two weedcarriers with a few appearances from Freeway and a solitary quick verse by Peedi. This might have been a problem if the two weedcarriers weren't dead-ringers for the Young Gunz, if the beats weren't entirely competent Just Blaze knock-offs with samples from the Rocky 4 soundtrack, if the songs weren't short and sweet (1000 Barz is only 3:29 in length), and if the whole affair didn't have a strong aroma of outtakes from the first State Property album which were cut from the final tracklist due to sample clearance (I imagine Vince DiCola samples don't exactly come cheap) about it. Pity about that Joe Budden verse on Ride Up, though, eh?



K-Rino ft. DJ Screw - Why Ya Wanna Hate?



Usually a song which begins with "I don't brag about cars, and I don't brag about clothes/I don't call women bitches, tramps or Hoes" would have me scrambling for the skip button faster than Phil Brown reaches for a tin of creosote now he's on 'gardening leave', but, like them Masta Ace noughties solo albums, there's enough authorative attitude present here for it to not topple over into the abyss of humourless hectoring where KRS has resided since 1997 and for me to not be alienated by a rapper frowning upon all the traits I fell in love with rap for in the first place, particularly since it's the rapper I first discovered on Ganksta N-I-P's South Park Psycho tape back in 1992. Of course, beyond the opening gambit this is essentially your standard K-Rino battle-rap track where he talks about doin' bad things to other rappers, Screw's slurred pontifications on the intro and outro are more than welcome, and minimal synth driven beats such as this are the third element of Gang$ta-Rap after misogyny and gun-talk.